- Anthropologie de soi (ANT-1604). Département d’anthropologie, Université Laval.
- Ingénierie sociale et posthumanisme (ANT-2329). Département d’anthropologie, Université Laval.
- Séminaire intercycle I: La plasticité : perspectives anthropologiques sur le processus de transformation humaine (ANT-7002). Département d’anthropologie, Université Laval.
- Anthropologie de la médecine (ANT-2300). Département d’anthropologie, Université Laval.
- Anthropologie des technosciences (ANT-2324). Département d’anthropologie, Université Laval.
- Évolution, génétique et identité humaine (ANT-1101). Département d’anthropologie, Université Laval.
Stephanie Lloyd
Département d’anthropologie
Directrice de programmes de 1er cycle en anthropologie, Professeure titulaire
I am an anthropologist of medicine whose research is situated at the intersection of anthropology of psychiatry, science and technology studies, and critical disability studies. My research activities include two axes.
The first is a study of the production of knowledge and practices in neuroepigenetics and neuroscience research. Specifically, I am interested in the way that scientists correlate the experience of early childhood adversity with suicide risk later in life. The project "Situating Suicide Risk: An Inquiry into the Lives and Afterlives of Neurobiological Vulnerability" (with collaborators Delphine Collin-Vézina, Angela Filipe, Marie-Claude Geoffroy, Alexandre Larivée, Pierre-Eric Lutz, Naguib Mechawar, Amélie Quesnel-Vallée, Eugene Raikhel, Gustavo Turecki), is funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (2019-2024). Environmental epigenetics is a field that explores how DNA expression is modified by environmental factors both in the life of individuals and potentially between generations. My research is particularly attentive to the way in which the social environment is integrated in this research as well as conceptions of risk temporalities in the resulting models. This project examines tensions between the interests of researchers to study the complexity of the associations between environmental and human development and their strategic need to reduce the environment as they operationalize it in research protocols. More broadly, my research explores the impact of epigenetic models on theories of development and human plasticity. I compare scientists’ models of suicide risk to life stories of suicidal people or the accounts of family members of people who have died by suicide.
My second research axis seeks to “disrupt” conventional research on cochlear implants (CIs) through interdisciplinary dialogue and innovation grounded in people’s experiences with CIs. The project, “Deafnesses: Reconfiguring expertise and reconsidering sensory experiences with/out the cochlear implant” is funded by Patient-oriented research priority funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (2022-2024). Through this project, along with my collaborators (Kelsey Anbuhl, Isabelle Boivert, Jennifer Campos, Michele Friedner, Mara Mills, Emily Kecman, Chi Yhun Lo, and Katie Neal), we aim to [1] document people’s experiences with CIs, [2] identify what is currently measured, or not, about these experiences in clinical and research spaces, [3] catalogue what people with CIs want to be known, made perceptible, and taken into account about their experiences (e.g. sensory experiences, communication styles, personal or professional issues), and [4] mobilize interdisciplinary expertise to work across data sets (e.g. experiential accounts, audiological files, neurophysiological measures) to understand experiences with CIs differently. Using an approach grounded in deaf epistemologies and guided by the principles of design justice, we will centre what deaf people want from CIs and how they want their experiences should be understood. We offer a collaborative and participative model to replace the traditional “user-tester” role in assistive technology design and management. We will bring together the results of qualitative research (e.g. interviews, focus groups, critically annotated audiologic reports), clinical questionnaires (e.g. audiology tools), and electrophysiological data (EEGs) to produce critical biosocial understandings of the experience of CIs. Through these methods, this project seeks transformative change through action and critique and the production of practice-based evidence (PBE). PBE combines insights of patients, practitioners, and researchers to document and measure real world practises and experiences: it tracks and measures what matters. This approach destabilizes a sense of mastery and encourages health care professionals to produce new knowledge and practices that they did not know they were missing. The findings and tools resulting from this intersectoral project will respond to calls in audiology and beyond for multidisciplinary, translational research.
Courses
Publications
(selection)
Books
Meloni, M., Cromby, J., Fitzgerald, D. and Lloyd, S. eds., 2018. The Palgrave handbook of biology and society. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Special Issues of Journals
Lloyd, S. and Müller, R., 2018. Situating the Biosocial. Empirical Engagements with Environmental Epigenetics. Biosocieties. 13(4).
Articles
Lloyd, S. and Bonventre, C., 2023. Habilitation beyond the Bionic Metaphor: Producing Deafnesses of the Future. Science, Technology, & Human Values, p.01622439231183215.
Lloyd, S., Lutz, P.E. and Bonventre, C., 2023. Can you remember silence? Epigenetic memory and reversibility as a site of intervention. BioEssays, 45(7), p.2300019.
Lloyd, S., Larivée, A. and Lutz, P.E., 2022. Homeorhesis: Envisaging the logic of life trajectories in molecular research on trauma and its effects. History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 44(4), p.65.
Lloyd, S., 2022. Jusqu'où penser la structuration sociale du cerveau?. Discussion du Grand résumé de l’ouvrage de Muriel Darmon Réparer les cerveaux. Sociologie des pertes et des récupérations post-AVC, Paris, Éditions La Découverte, 2021. SociologieS.
Lloyd, S. and Larivée, A., 2021. Shared relations: trauma and kinship in the afterlife of death. Medical anthropology quarterly, 35(4), pp.476-492.
Lloyd, S. and Tremblay, A., 2021. No hearing without signals: imagining and reimagining transductions through the history of the cochlear implant. The Senses and Society, 16(3), pp.259-277.
Filipe, A.M., Lloyd, S. and Larivée, A., 2021. Troubling Neurobiological Vulnerability: Psychiatric Risk and the Adverse Milieu in Environmental Epigenetics Research. Frontiers in Sociology, 6, p.635986.
Lloyd, S. and Larivée, A., 2020. Time, trauma, and the brain: How suicide came to have no significant precipitating event. Science in context, 33(3), pp.299-327.
Lloyd, S. and Bonventre, C., 2020. When the artificial is natural: reconsidering what bionics and sensoria do. Ethos, 48(3), pp.295-316.
Leclerc, V., Tremblay, A., Bonventre, C. and Lloyd, S., 2020. L’anthropologie médicale. Anthropen, October, https://revues.ulaval.ca/ojs/index.php/anthropen/article/view/30579.
Lloyd, S., Filipe, A. and Larivée, A., 2020. Epistemic and temporal disjunctions:(re) mapping “suicide risk” epigenetics through birth cohorts,”. Somatosphere. Available online at: http://somatosphere. net/2020/suicide-risk-epigeneticsbirth-cohorts. html.
Lloyd, S. and Raikhel, E., 2018. “It was there all along”: Situated uncertainty and the politics of publication in environmental epigenetics. BioSocieties, 13, pp.737-760.
Lloyd, S. and Müller, R., 2018. Situating the biosocial: Empirical engagements with environmental epigenetics from the lab to the clinic. BioSocieties, 13, pp.675-680.
Müller, R., Hanson, C., Hanson, M., Penkler, M., Samaras, G., Chiapperino, L., Dupré, J., Kenney, M., Kuzawa, C., Latimer, J. and Lloyd, S., 2017. The biosocial genome? Interdisciplinary perspectives on environmental epigenetics, health and society. EMBO reports, 18(10), pp.1677-1682.
Lloyd, S. and Raikhel, E., 2014. L’épigénétique environnementale et le risque suicidaire: Reconsidérer la notion de contexte dans un style de raisonnement émergent. Anthropologie & Santé. Revue internationale francophone d'anthropologie de la santé, (9).
Chapters
Lloyd, S. and Raikhel, E., 2018. Environmental epigenetics and suicide risk at a molecular scale. In Routledge Handbook of Genomics, Health and Society (pp. 254-262). Eds: S. Hilgartner, S. Gibbon, B. Prainsack, and J. Lamoreau. London: Routledge.
Meloni, M., Cromby, J., Fitzgerald, D. and Lloyd, S., 2018. Introducing the new biosocial landscape. In The Palgrave handbook of biology and society, pp.1-22. Eds: M. Meloni, J. Cromby, D. Fitzgerald, and S. Lloyd. London: Palgrave.
Lloyd, S. and Raikhel, E., 2018. Epigenetics and the suicidal brain: Reconsidering context in an emergent style of reasoning. In The Palgrave handbook of biology and society, pp.491-515. Eds: M. Meloni, J. Cromby, D. Fitzgerald, and S. Lloyd. London: Palgrave.
Lloyd, S. and Raikhel, E., 2018. Epigenetics and the suicidal brain: Reconsidering context in an emergent style of reasoning. In The Palgrave handbook of biology and society, pp.491-515. Eds: L. Manderson, A. Hardon, and E. Cartwright. London: Routledge.
Reports
Bonventre, C., Lloyd, S., Boisvert, I., Campos, J., Friedner, M., Kolb, R., Lo, C.Y., Mills, M., Neal, K. 2023. Reassessing what matters in experiences with cochlear implants. 42 pages. https://corpus.ulaval.ca/entities/publication/4cffd00e-0ffb-49cf-aa01-12e94c9e3648
Selected Research Projects
2024-2029 CIHR (Canadian Institutes of Health Research). Deafnesses: Reconfiguring expertise and reconsidering sensory experiences with/out the cochlear implant. Principal investigator: S. Lloyd. Co-investigators: I. Boisvert, J. Campos, M. Friedner, M. Mills. Collaborators: K. Neal, E. Kecman, C. Yhun Lo, K. Anbuhl. Budget: $612 000. Lay abstract.
2022 CIHR (Canadian Institutes of Health Research). Deafnesses: Reconfiguring expertise and reconsidering sensory experiences with/out the cochlear implant. Principal investigator: S. Lloyd. Co-applicants: M. Friedner, K. Snodden, M. Mills, R. Kolb, J. Campos, S. Sparks, L. Mauldin, A. Dimitrijevik. Budget: $100 000. Priority funds for Patient-oriented research.
2021 CIHR (Canadian Institutes of Health Research). Deafnesses: Reconfiguring expertise and reconsidering sensory experiences with/out the cochlear implant. Principal investigator: S. Lloyd. Co-applicants: M. Friedner, K. Snodden, M. Mills, R. Kolb, J. Campos, S. Sparks, L. Mauldin, A. Dimitrijevik. Budget: $100 000. Priority funds for Patient-oriented research
2020 Distinguished Professorial Fellowship at the Alfred Deakin Institute. Trauma as Environment. Budget: $10 000 to support a four-month fellowship at the ADI in Melbourne, Australia. *deferred until 2022
2019-24 CIHR (Canadian Institutes of Health Research). Situating Suicide Risk: An inquiry into the production of the lives and afterlives of neurobiological vulnerability. Principal investigator: S. Lloyd. Co-applicants: A. Filipe, E. Raikhel, A. Quesnel-Vallée, D. Collin-Vézina, G. Turecki, N. Mechawar, MC. Geoffroy, PE. Lutz. Collaborator: A. Larivée. Budget: $455 176. *ranked 1st by the Humanities, Social Sciences, Law & Ethics in Health committee
2019-21 Wellcome Trust Small Grant, Biosocial Birth Cohort Research: A Cross-Disciplinary Network. PI: S. Gibbon; Collaborators: A. Benezra, M. Kelly-Irving, A. Filipe, S. Stringhini, EFS. Roberts, S. Fraga, MM. Téllez-Rojo, N. Hallowell, M. Lappé, M. Pentecost, J. Lamoureaux, Y. Kelly, S. Silva, A. Castro, B. Prainsack. Budget: $47 011
2017-19 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Insight Development, When Deaf People Hear: A Study at the Intersection of Neuroplasticity, Technological Interventions, and Experiences in the Grey Zone of Deaf and Hearing. Principal investigator: S. Lloyd. Co-investigator: M. Friedner. Budget: $63 736. *ranked 2nd in its category
2016-19 CIHR (Canadian Institutes of Health Research), The Evidence-Base for Promoting Mental Wellness and Resilience to Address Suicide in Circumpolar Region, team grant, P2RASP: Pathways to Resilience and Suicide Prevention in the Arctic. Principal applicant: E. Chachamovich; co-investigators V. Paradis, J. Lane, G. Turecki, M. Grey, J. Stuart Jr., L. Kuptana, A. Tulugak, S. Lloyd, L. Nadeau. Collaborators: M. Beaulne, M. Inukpuk-Iqaluk, J. Ogina, M. Tomlinson. Budget: $775 000.
2015-18 FQRSC (Fonds Québécois de la Recherche sur la Société et la Culture) Operating grant (jeunes professeurs-chercheurs programme), L’empreinte de la vie : tracer la production des modèles d’incorporation épigénétiques. Budget: $50 091.
2014-16 Fonds de démarrage de la Faculté des sciences sociales, Université Laval. Budget: $10 000.
2014-15 Brocher Foundation Workshop Grant, Environmental Epigenetics and the Promise of Biosocial Science. Co-PIs: Stephanie Lloyd and Eugene Raikhel. Budget: $9640
2013-17 CIHR (Canadian Institutes of Health Research), Standard Operating Grant, Neurosciences and the Afterlife of Death: Re-imagining Notions of Suicidal Risk. PI: S. Lloyd; Co-Investigators: E. Raikhel (University of Chicago), S. Choudhury (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science), L. Kirmayer (McGill University), G. Turecki (McGill University), F. Jollant (McGill University), Budget: $158 000 *ranked 1st by the Humanities, Social Sciences, Law & Ethics in Health committee
Students
Masters
In progress
2023-present Myriam Rivest, Master’s student. La relation entre l’individu et son diagnostic de trouble de personnalité dans le système médical québécois. Département d’anthropologie, Université Laval. Département d’anthropologie, Université Laval.
Completed
2020-2023 Simone Lavoie-Racine, Master’s student. L’endométriose en Île-de-France: Entre expériences collectives, savoirs et politiques publiques
2020-2023 Samuel Duchesne, Master’s student. Assembler les capacités de surveillance.
2018-2023 Alexandre Tremblay, Master’s student. Quand la flore intestinale nous définit : à la recherche d’un profil de risque de maladie mentale chez les Inuits.
2018-2023 Yan Julien, Master’s student. Nos deux âges : analyse de la production d'âge chronologique et épigénétique.
2018-2022 Chani Bonventre, Master’s student. Quand précision et prévention se rencontrent : examen des pratiques de prévention à l'ère du soi quantifié.
2017-2021 Véronique Leclerc, Master’s student. Construire une réalité virtuelle : le rôle des conceptualisations des sens. Département d’anthropologie, Université Laval.
Doctoral
In progress
2022-present Cassandre Ville, Doctoral student. Prescrire la nature : comprendre la redéfinition du lien entre santé mentale et environnement par l'analyse anthropologique des soins psys qui mobilisent la nature, au Québec et en France.
2016-present Alexandre Larivée, Doctoral student. La circulation de la notion d’un « cerveau suicidaire » : des modèles moléculaires aux espaces cliniques. Département d’anthropologie, Université Laval.
Completed
2014-2023 Andrée-Ann Métivier, Doctoral student. Méditation dans le laboratoire. Expérience et épistémologies de la science de la pleine conscience. Département d’anthropologie, Université Laval. Département d’anthropologie, Université Laval.
Research interests
- Anthropology
- Anthropology of medicine
- Anthropology of psychiatry
- Social change
- Epigenetics
- Ethnography
- Social studies of science
- France
- Genetics
- Senses
- Models of neuroplasticity
- Neuroscience
- Suicide
- Deafness
- Evolutionary theory
- Trauma
- Mood and anxiety disorders